{"id":12667,"date":"2009-04-26T19:28:48","date_gmt":"2009-04-26T19:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/26\/a-liberal-asks-what-are-the-bases-of-liberal-opposition-to-religion\/"},"modified":"2009-04-26T19:28:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-26T19:28:48","slug":"a-liberal-asks-what-are-the-bases-of-liberal-opposition-to-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/26\/a-liberal-asks-what-are-the-bases-of-liberal-opposition-to-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Liberal Asks: What are the Bases of Liberal Opposition to Religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harriet E. Baber, professor of philosophy, "unrepentant liberal," and proprietor of <\/font>The Enlightenment Project<\/font><\/a> <\/font>writes<\/font><\/a>,<\/font><\/p>\n

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I'm an academic. Most of my friends and colleagues are atheists, have no sympathy for religion of any kind and, in particular, detest Christianity. Being a good liberal I read good liberal sources because I like to read people who agree with me but when it comes to religion they don't agree with me. [. . .] As a Christian, I am exceedingly pissed off about about being characterized as Other, and not only Other but Dangerous Other. What is the problem?<\/p>\n

Is it because we hold beliefs you regard as false or flat out stupid? I have some sympathy with that because I don't have any sympathy with stupidity. [. . .]<\/font><\/p>\n

Is it because you take Christianity to be a moral and, more importantly, political agenda, putting a lid on sexual expression and generally making people miserable?<\/p>\n

Which is it? Or is it something completely different? I'm just curious. OK, not just. I want to convert the wor[l]d. <\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I would certainly not characterize myself as a liberal as this term is popularly understood, but I am deeply sympathetic to religion, though also quite critical of it as readers of this blog know. Like Baber, I am puzzled by the depth of the animus against religion, Christianity in particular, that emanates from the Left.  Why the blind, raging hostility to it?  Why the inability to see anything good in it?  Why the fulminations of people like <\/font>A. C. "Gasbag" Grayling<\/font><\/a>?  As I see it, the following are some of the main reasons why otherwise intelligent liberals oppose religion.  It is obvious that not every person who self-identifies as 'liberal' is opposed to religion; it is equally obvious that most are.  So when I speak of liberals I mean most contemporary liberals.<\/font><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

1.   In answer to Baber's first question, liberals do indeed view religious beliefs as false.  But not merely as false, but as irrational and in conflict with what we know about about the world.  And so it is natural for them to view religious believers as as either stupid or ignorant.  Liberals "know" that that there is no God and that no man rose from the dead.  Since they "know" these things, they consider beliefs in God and Resurrection to be in conflict with plain fact and to this extent 'irrational' in one sense of this term. Someone who holds such beliefs must therefore either lack intelligence or be ignorant of natural science.<\/font><\/p>\n

2.  What's more, liberals consider religious beliefs to be dangerous<\/em>  because such beliefs are taken to impede the very enlightenment project that Baber supports, a project that requires the application of natural science via technology to the alleviation of human suffering.    People who believe in 'pie in the sky' won't work to improve conditions 'here below.'  This is a familiar Marxist idea, the idea of religion as an opiate.  People in the grip of religious ideas denigrate the only world there is, this physical world.  They would keep us under a cloud of Medieval superstition.  They are the dupes of priestcraft.  And so on.<\/font><\/p>\n

In addition, religious belief-systems which exploit human fear and credulity engender hostility to people holding opposing beliefs.  This leads to wars, persecutions, inquisitions, witch hunts . . .  Liberals of course conveniently ignore the fact that non-religious and explicitly anti-religious ideologies can also lead to wars, persecutions, inquisitions, and witch-hunts.  Think of the Soviet gulags, the Moscow show trials, the fact that <\/font>P.C. comes from the C.P.<\/font><\/a><\/p>\n

3.  As for Baber's second question, opposition to religion is indeed also fueled by the perceived moral and political agenda of some religionists.  Take abortion.  The typical liberal thinks that opposition to abortion rests entirely on religious premises.  This is plainly false as I have demonstrated more than once, most recently <\/font>here<\/font><\/a>.  But this is the way liberals think.  So thinking, and convinced that there is such a 'reproductive right' as the right to an abortion, they feel religion must be opposed as infringing on their rights.<\/font><\/p>\n

4. There is also the issue of hypocrisy.  Liberals fear two things more than anything: to be called a 'racist' and to be called a 'hypocrite.'  (And we will note that they use these terms in exceedingly sloppy ways as portmanteau terms of abuse.  Disagree with a liberal about almost anything and he is likely to label you a 'racist.') Liberals hate what they take to be preaching and moralizing and 'being judgmental' but they have no trouble condemning the hypocrisy of the moralizers.  Indeed, they come perilously close to an idea that one can find in Hegel, namely that to be moral at at all is to be a hypocrite.    Now I think it is undeniable that the most egregious examples of hypocrisy are found among religionists, especially those of the televangelical variety.  For details, see <\/font>Hypocrisy, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Left.<\/font><\/a>  So it is no surprise that the typical liberal feels that he must oppose religion if he is to stamp out that summum malum<\/em>, hypocrisy.  In brief, the Left's  hatred of hypocrisy inclines leftists to hate religion with its hard-to-attain moral demands, demands so demanding that they do as a matter of fact drive some into hypocrisy.<\/font><\/p>\n

5. Hostility to tradition is a mark of 'progressives' as leftists like to call themselves.  Conservatives, on the other hand, believe that there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doings things and traditional forms of life.  The fact that religion is part and parcel of most traditional forms of life may be an additional reason that helps explain leftist hostility to religion.  'Progressives' look forward to an 'enlightened' future in which religion will have disappeared.  Case in point: the first two verses of John Lennon's dopey song, "Imagine":<\/font><\/p>\n

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…<\/font><\/p>\n

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harriet E. Baber, professor of philosophy, "unrepentant liberal," and proprietor of The Enlightenment Project writes, I'm an academic. Most of my friends and colleagues are atheists, have no sympathy for religion of any kind and, in particular, detest Christianity. Being a good liberal I read good liberal sources because I like to read people who agree … Continue reading “A Liberal Asks: What are the Bases of Liberal Opposition to Religion?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}